While getting ready to present my program last Tuesday, I was asked out of the blue to speak to a group of high school students. Not just high school students, by the way; but alternative high school students. I found the whole experience a real lesson for myself. Since I taped the session, I listened very carefully to the replay. Here is what I learned:
1. For some people, the concept of living a life where you have a choice in what you do is truly beyond realization.
2. Some memories of basic childhood events, when traumatic and relatively recent, are buried so deeply they are completely unavailable.
3. Within the late teen bracket, the world is finite and very small, regardless of what else you know is out there like the internet, books, experiences, etc. Outside your own community, all is nothingness.
and
4. Negativity and distrust, apparent rudeness and an attitude of pessimism are actually shields of a defense mechanism covering up an incredible hunger to socialize.
I think the fourth item was the biggest realization. So many of the “kids” (who were bigger than I am) showed me a crusty, tough-guy attitude, feigned indifference and unbelievable negativity. But once I got their attention and made eye contact, impressed me with their hunger to learn, to improve themselves regardless of how useless, how stupid or how incompetent they’d been told they were — such a shining behind darkened, shielded eyes.
I’ve been given a gift this life of being able to see into people’s souls; to see past who they say they are, who they represent themselves to be. I’ve never been wrong about someone and it occurs as just a certainty, as if I’d known them for years. With one of the young women and two of the young men, there was a real opening I felt, a crack in their armor.
This is what I’m here for – I’ve always said I’m dangerous. I seriously threaten status quo for those stuck in their own morass of little “r” reality. Being dangerous is a good thing. 
Life Coaches, Portland, OR
